Laravel Microscope Laravel Package

Product Decisions This Supports

• Quality-gate investment: Decide whether to add a lint/static-analysis stage to CI that catches broken routes, orphaned Blade views, mismatched controller actions, dead classes, and — new in v1.0.403 — fully-qualified-class-name and import-convention drift without writing a single test. The package is effectively a "free test suite" for wiring-level and style-level correctness.
• Build vs. buy: Avoid commissioning custom static-analysis scripts, bespoke CI checks, or a homegrown import-linting ruleset. The MIT license, Laravel-native checks, and now first-class import enforcement (enforce:imports) and FQCN validation (check:fqcn) make adoption a near-zero-cost decision versus 2–4 weeks of internal tooling.
• Tech-debt roadmap prioritization: Use its "unused class / unused view / unused route" reports to quantify dead code, and the new import/FQCN checks to quantify convention debt. That gives a defensible, data-backed cleanup backlog for sprints instead of gut-feel estimates.
• Upgrade risk assessment: Before a Laravel major-version bump or framework refactor, run it to surface broken references and convention drift — informing whether to schedule a hardening sprint. The new --except-file= / --except-folder= flags let you scope a first pass to the code you're actually touching.
• Legacy acquisition audit: When inheriting or acquiring a Laravel codebase, run it as a cheap due-diligence scan to estimate remediation cost — including inconsistent import hygiene, which is a reliable proxy for overall codebase discipline.
• Onboarding accelerator: New engineers get an automated map of what's actually wired up versus what's cruft, plus a codified statement of the project's import conventions, reducing ramp time and review nitpicks.

When to Consider This Package

• You run a Laravel codebase of non-trivial size (roughly 50+ classes, multiple route files, many Blade views) where manual wiring review no longer scales.
• Your CI already exists and you want additional signal without expanding test authoring time. The v1.0.403 performance improvements and the new exclusion flags make the runtime-cost tradeoff easier to justify.
• You need static, convention-level checks — not runtime behavior or integration coverage. Adoption now covers both wiring correctness and import/FQCN consistency, so it can double as a lightweight style gate.
• You want a ratchet strategy: adopt the new --except-file= / --except-folder= exclusions to grandfather noisy or non-conforming areas, then tighten the baseline over successive sprints.
• You are auditing legacy or inherited code and need a fast, low-effort inventory of unused/broken elements.
• Look elsewhere when: the project isn't Laravel; you need real behavioral/unit test coverage; you already run deep type analysis (PHPStan/Larastan) with overlap you don't want to duplicate; the codebase is tiny enough that manual review is trivial; or your team's conventions deviate heavily from Laravel defaults — though the new per-file/per-folder exclusions materially reduce this risk and make a pilot far more tractable. Still confirm CI runtime cost against your pipeline budget, and verify whether the new commands are report-only or auto-fixing before you wire them into a blocking gate.

How to Pitch It (Stakeholders)

For executives (business framing): We can reduce maintenance cost and regression risk at effectively zero license cost by adding an automated code-health scan to our deployment pipeline. It flags unused code we're paying to maintain and catches broken wiring before it reaches customers — improving release confidence without adding headcount or test-writing effort. The latest release also enforces import and class-reference consistency, which reduces review churn and makes the codebase cheaper to hand off between teams.

For engineering (practical framing): A drop-in dev dependency (MIT, actively maintained) that statically analyzes the Laravel app and reports dead classes, orphaned views, unreachable routes, and convention violations. Version 1.0.403 adds check:fqcn and enforce:imports for class-reference and import hygiene, --except-file= / --except-folder= for scoped rollouts and suppression, and meaningful performance gains. It requires no test authoring, runs standalone or in CI, and gives us a concrete cleanup list. It complements — not replaces — PHPUnit/PHPStan; treat it as a lint layer for framework wiring. Recommend a pilot run on one service using the new exclusion flags to grandfather existing noise: measure findings and false-positive rate, then decide which checks become blocking in CI.